Giving Up
by Carry On
Summary: Love can be expressed in more than words and kisses. [Yugi x Atem][One Shot]


**On every Yu-Gi-Oh! product there is the name "Kazuki Takahashi". I have deduced so far that he is somehow related to the ownership of Yu-Gi-Oh. **

**Giving Up**

The bell gave a weak tinkle as Yugi opened the door to the game shop, but yelled as the door was let shut.

"I'm home," Yugi called as he proceeded through the store and exited the room, just as a bird will appear from one side of a window and fly swiftly across it to disappear out the other. As he entered the living room, Yugi's grandfather started to get up from his seat on the couch, a half cup of tea and an open newspaper sitting before him on the table. He briefly studied Yugi's expression before asking him: "Anzu's left already?"

Yugi nodded and then smiled, though a trace of sadness could be seen in his slightly downcast eyes. "She's finally started her dream."

"I'm very proud of her. I wish I could have gone to say goodbye," Here he groaned a little as he took a step away from the couch. Earlier that week, a slip down the bottom half of the stairs had made his back worse than it ever had been before and had confined him to the house. Before his grandfather could begin a painful journey back to his duties in the shop, Yugi held up his hand to stop him.

"You shouldn't move until you're better, _Oji-chan_! I'll take care of the shop today, it's no problem."

Grandpa looked at Yugi's worried expression and smiled. He turned carefully and eased down onto the seat.

"Oh, all right. The shop's been missing you this past week."

"I helped Sunday," Yugi jokingly protested before he went back into the game shop. Grandpa slowly brought his legs up onto the couch and laid down on his side, the smile vanishing from his face as another arrow of pain was shot from his lower back.

123

Yugi leaned on the counter with his chin cupped in his hands and stared on the door. It had been a half an hour since he had started his shift and no one had come, but he had been too involved in his thoughts to notice.

Naturally, his mind had centered on Anzu, who had left earlier that day for America. Despite knowing that she was someday going to leave to fulfill her goal of dancing on Broadway, the goodbye was still tinged with sadness; Anzu had even produced a few tears which had fallen slowly down the curve of her cheeks. He and Jonouchi had delayed their own departure until her plane had ascended into a sky so blue and devoid of clouds that it seemed as if she had taken a submarine rather than a plane to explore an unearthly ocean.

That farewell, filled with the conflicting emotions of wanting Anzu to stay and willing to let her go to where her future awaited, snuck in thoughts of another person Yugi loved even more than the strong-willed girl. It surprised Yugi a little that the memory of the spirit of the Millennium Puzzle, Atem, was brought up just then and not at the airport, but he welcomed the lateness of the thought. The solitude and silence of the shop suited remembrances of his other self better than a busy airport. And even though Anzu and Jonouchi had been friends with the former Pharaoh, he didn't even want to think about a certain event that had taken place shortly before Atem had departed for the next world around them.

During the two years since the spirit had passed on, and especially at the beginning, the memory that had reoccurred the most was one he alone had experienced. He had been carefully and steadily placing the ancient items back into their moulds, but his smooth pace had been momentarily halted by the Tauk. As it traveled in his hands towards its final resting place, the item, as if a showman giving his crowd his grand finale, sent Yugi a vision of the future. The Tauk grew warm in his hand as the dank, underground room was washed away by various expanding black splotches and replaced with the perfect copy of his own room. Inside, he and the ghostly figure of his other self sat on his bed, facing one another. The Yugi in front of him had his legs crossed over one another and wore pure expression of worry on his wide face.

At first, he had thought this was a vision of the past, sent by the item for him to keep perfectly preserved in his mind forever. He believed that until his form on the bed stopped speaking and the spirit next to him made no reply. They both remained silent, their gazes locked, until the present Yugi saw the spirit lean closer to the copy of himself.

By the weak light of the moon passing through his ceiling window, Yugi watched with a speeding heart as the Pharaoh embraced him, the future him, and kissed him lightly on the lips. Even though he was not inside that form, Yugi felt the see-through arms on his own bare limbs, binding them to his side as if a loose cord. Invisible lips pressed tenderly against his as well and if he had not been witnessing the scene just then, he probably would not have noticed that sweet, but minuscule, amount of pressure.

The Tauk had shown him a future in which he had not sent his other self back to the land of the dead. Before the glimpse, he had been determined to do deliver his partner to that world, but now he wavered. Even if the spirit didn't get his own body, even if he was trapped in a world that was not destined to be his, maybe it would be worth the suffering if they stayed together and moved even closer than they had to one another. Yugi had started to give in to that line of reasoning, and may have fallen to it, if he hadn't looked again at the scene before him and seen the spirit's face. Atem had been smiling, but it wasn't like the ones he displayed when they had won a duel or gotten through a hardship together. It had carried that familiar distant gaze of longing for a permanent home.

A home that was not with Yugi in the mortal world.

Hit with that truth more fully than ever before, Yugi had given up the future the Tauk predicted and gently placed it in the great stone. How could he enjoy that love expressed in the previous scene when his other self was still searching for his rightful place? Everyone's soul belonged in a particular somewhere, and though Yugi wished it with all his will, Atem's soul could not remain with him and live on in a world that left him wandering.

That day he had defeated his other self and returned him to waiting friends. Regret over that choice had sometimes walked into his thoughts uninvited, but it was always banished quickly.

After all, Yugi knew that the love expressed in his decision to send Atem back to the land he belonged to was even greater than any contained in words or kisses.

**End**

**This story was written for the YGO Fanfiction Contest run by computerfreak101. It's the first shonen-ai pairing to come up in the contest in which I haven't wanted to grab a book and smack myself upside the head with it a few times upon reading it. But I've always had a soft spot for this pairing and I'm glad I've forced myself to write it, even after agonizing over getting the message across right. I hope this has been a nice read for you, but I can't say more can be expected for this couple. **


End file.
